INCENTIVE 2-day mutual learning workshop – Barcelona, May 2022

Overview

On the 31st of May, the INCENTIVE team members met in person in a 2-day mutual learning workshop that was held in Barcelona, on the premises of the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

The workshop was part of a series of mutual learning sessions between the four pilot universities of the project, with the aim to prepare our team for launching after summer the Citizen Science Hubs. The workshop was organised and hosted by the Autonomous University of Barcelona. The objective was to gather the representatives of the pilot universities, but also supporting partners, in order to work together on preparing their regional stakeholder engagement plans, the activities to be implemented in each Hub, and the use of the Citizen Science Digital Toolkit of the project, as well as monitoring and evaluation activities.

What happened during the event?

The event was split into two days.

On the first day, a series of inspirational talks by external speakers kicked off the workshop. Margaret Gold talked about the Citizen Science Lab of the University of Leiden, while the Ethics Framework and Guidelines of the sister ProEthics project was presented. Moreover, Raul Toran and Diana Reinoso presented useful lessons learned from the CitieS-Health and TRANSFORM projects respectively, sparking a discussion about how knowledge transfer between projects can help INCENTIVE accomplish its objectives. The first day closed with some interactive sessions between partners, who reflected on the regional stakeholder engagement plans of each university, the necessary capacity building, and the awareness-raising activities.

The second day started with the team from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki presenting theMethodological Guide & Digital Toolkit of INCENTIVE, and how the Hubs will use it to attract members and implement local citizen science projects. A pilot co-creation session followed with partners ideating on the optimal use of the Toolkit. The second day closed with another co-creation session about responsible futuring and design thinking on how to map CS projects protocol at the local level.

Next steps

The 2-day workshop laid the ground for transitioning to the next phase of the project, which entails the pilot launch of the Citizen Science Hubs after summer. Since a lot of preparatory work has been done, and partners strongly support each other, our team is confident that we will be ready for the big step, which will lead to the birth of the Hubs.

Next stop: Thessaloniki, July 2022. Stay tuned!